Happy New Year, blog friends! Of course, my blog post about setting goals in the new year is fashionably late. I’ve been seeing a trend within the people I follow online, and they are sharing that the start of their new year wasn’t so great. I had a delayed start to this year too – I was not feeling okay mentally or emotionally. But here we are, getting through it and I’m ready to start my new year now. There must’ve been some constellation or some aura in the air that was throwing so many people off their game. Or, maybe we need to stop putting so much pressure on January 1st. Maybe a suggestion for 2023!
Throughout 2021 I wanted to hone in on my goal-setting skills and learn what it takes to set yourself up for success. As I may have mentioned before, I LOVE to plan things and arrange the logistics of things. However, when it comes down to actually putting the plan to action, I fall short. This year I want to follow through on the goals that I set and do whatever I can to achieve them and maintain that identity of someone who accomplishes their goals.
Depending on the type of person you are, you probably have your own reservations about setting goals. One of my coworkers shared that she doesn’t like to set goals or New Year Resolutions because she gets very down on herself when she doesn’t complete them. I totally understand that, and respect people’s decisions based on their own limits. If you are someone who does like to set goals or maybe are interested in learning more about what I found, please read on!
From what I found, here are the summarized steps to goal setting.
- See where you want to be in 1, 3, 5, or 10 years. It’s important to look further in the future to the type of person you want to become. If you’re into manifesting, sit and really visualize your desired future.
- Identify your big picture goals and identity that you’ll need in order to achieve your desired future. These are your “big picture goals”. For example, one of my big picture goals is to live a healthier life.
- Break each large goal into a smaller, more attainable goals. If your timeline is 3 years, break the benchmark points to 2 years, 1.5 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month, and 1 week. In 1 week, maybe I’ll make a commitment to incorporate a fruit or vegetable in every meal. In 1 month, my goal could be to work out 20 times for 30 minutes. In 3 months, my goal could be to not only be eating healthy and working out, but maybe checking in on the quality of my sleep.
- Operational goals should be short-term and small (like adding a fruit or vegetable to every meal). This concept keeps you motivated and it is easier to track the progress.
- Identify any possible obstacles and create a game plan to work around it. To go along with the healthy diet trend, to avoid the obstacle of not having any fruits and vegetables available, I’ll plan to purchase fruits and vegetables in grocery runs so that they’re easily available to me.
- Once you have the operational goals and the game plans to avoid obstacles, categorize your goals into various categories relevant to your life. The most common categories are career, financial, education, family, artistic, attitude/mindset, physical, pleasure/enjoyment, public service.
- Start on your shortest term goals and work on it!
When setting goals, you want to ensure that they are “SMART”. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Goals should be specific to what you want to achieve. Then, by ensuring the goal is measurable you are able to check in with yourself and see if you are making any progress. Attainability and relevancy are important when setting goals because you want to be as realistic to your life as possible. For example, if I were to have the goal of flying to space by the end of the year that is close to impossible for my life situation and not relevant to my big picture goals. Finally, it is important to set a time range to your goal so that you can give yourself a deadline and benchmarks for checking in with yourself.
If you aren’t into setting goals, maybe starting several positive habits can push your life in the direction you want it to. Habits are different in the sense that they aren’t time-bound and are based around identity – who you want to become. I am in the process of reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, and I love it so far. I will definitely do a review on the book soon!
I could go on and on about how to set goals, but that would go against my very own goal of following through with the things I plan! Maybe I’ll share what all my goals are in a separate post. That way you can all hold me accountable for my actions too. Even though we are more than half way through January, it is never too late to start. The only mistake you can make when setting goals or habits, is to not start. With that said, have you set your intentions and goals for this year? If so, I wish you the best! Until next time…
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